Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

in tajtanibū kabā’ir mā
tunhawna ʿanhu nukaffir ʿankum sayyi’ātikum
—I’ll forgive your other sins, I’ll
overlook them. It’s not an open licence for you and me to sin, but Allah is
effectively saying: ‘Look, the big ones I will not forgive; I will not forgive. The

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smaller mistakes you make—by mistake not purposefully, because another 
āyah
in the Qur’an talks about people that make mistakes purposefully—but by
mistake if you fall into sin I will forgive you so long as you ask me for
forgiveness sincerely’. 
Subḥān Allāh
!
This is the gift of the Qur’an. It puts things in perspective, it gives us a sense
of priority. What should I worry about and what shouldn’t I worry about. What
should I make a big deal of in my life, and what can maybe take to the side, and
I can work on it, little by little by little. Like if somebody wants to, for example,
introduce the 
sunnah
prayers in their life. Or maybe for some of you the 
sunnah
prayers are hard, you’re barely making the 
farḍ
. Okay, introduce one 
sunnah
;
just the Fajr. Keep that up for a week or two, then add another 
sunnah
. You
don’t have to do all of it at once, you can build. You can get better little by little
by little. But when it comes to the 
kabā’ir
you don’t say, ‘Well I’m earning
haram right now, but I’m little by little getting out of it’. You can’t do that. ‘I’m
hurting people but I’m slowly trying to stop.’ No, no, no, there’s no slowly, that
stuff you have to let go cold turkey. You’ve got to make a decision, because that
is not something that Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
) is willing to tolerate.
I pray that we become people that stay far away from the 
kabā’ir
—the major
mistakes. I pray the way that we earn our money and we spend our money is
pleasing to Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
); and that it is governed by principles of fairness
and clarity. I pray that, for those of us who are in businesses, Allah (
ʿazza wa-
jall
) gives us the ability, the moral strength, the conviction to be able to engage
in fair, clear and open business transactions. I pray that the money that is
donated to all 
masājid
is good, pure, halal money; that the 
barakah
of that
money can show, 
in shā’ Allāh taʿālā
, in the activities, in the community
building that comes as a result of it.

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CHAPTER 7
Money Matters
I
n this reminder, 
in shā’ Allāh taʿālā
, I’ll share with you some thoughts about
āyāt
that belong to 
Sūrat al-Isrā’
.
These are a handful of 
āyāt
in which Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
) gives us some
guidance about how we should think about our money and how we should think
about shopping and spending.
The first 
āyah
I want to share with you is the twenty-fifth 
āyah
of the surah
where Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
) says:
Your Lord is best aware of what is in your hearts. If you are righteous,
He will indeed forgive those who relent and revert (to serving Allah).
(Al-Isrā’ 17: 25)
Rabbukum aʿlam bi-mā fī nufūsikum
—Allah knows better, your Master is
more knowledgeable, more aware with regards to what you have inside of
yourselves. So before Allah even gives us the 
aḥkām
, Allah tells us He knows
better what we have inside of us. This is actually an 
ishārah
—a hint—that
whatever Allah is about to teach us now, can only be checked by you; yourself.
In other words I will not be able to come and correct you, and you will not be

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able to come and correct me directly. This is something that we are going to
have to figure out for ourselves, it is a matter of personal conscience and
personal morality.
Someone who does not watch over themselves carefully, does not do